ary” at the conclusion of his triumph in 201 bce, just as Dionysius envis-
ages Publicola in 509 “feasting the most distinguished of the citizens” at
the end of his own procession and Dio reports a banquet for senators on
the Capitol at the triumph of Tiberius in 7 bce.15
Livy, too, though silent on popular triumphal dining, mentions this
elite custom in the context of Aemilius Paullus’ triumph in 167. In the
course of the triumphal debate, Paullus’ champion (as Livy scripts his
words) lists the “senate’s feast” as one of the religious elements of the cer-
emony: “What about that feast of the senate that is held neither on pri-
vate property, nor on unconsecrated public land, but on the Capitol?
Does this take place for the pleasure of mortal men or to honor the
gods?”16 In other words, it seems that once the general had arrived at the
Temple of Jupiter and the sacrifices had been performed, he did not nec-
essarily make his weary way home: a banquet for the senate or maybe a
wider group of the elite often followed, in the Capitoline temple itself or
perhaps at a Temple of Hercules.
Puzzling to ancient scholars were the rules of precedence at these din-
ners. Both Valerius Maximus and Plutarch refer to the “customary” ban-
quet. Why, they ask, was it the tradition for the consuls to be invited to
this occasion and then to be sent a message that they should not turn
up? The answer, they each suggest in slightly different formulations, is
to ensure that the triumphant commander is not upstaged: “So that, on
the day on which he triumphs, no one of greater imperium should be
present at the same dinner party.”17 This nicely indicates that more
was at stake in this banquet than the standard Roman practice of sharing
the sacrificial meat between priests, officials, and key participants—the
“religious” function hinted at by Livy.18 More too than the reintegration
of the general into the society of his elite peers after his day on the bor-
derline of divinity. We have already seen how written recreations of the
triumph repeatedly harp on the fragility of triumphal success, on the
The Boundaries of the Ritual
263
competitive calibration of triumphal glory, and on the dangers of humil-
iation that went along with the temporary elevation of the general. Ex-
actly those issues are reflected in this ancient explanation of the strange
“rule” about the invitation and disinvitation of the consuls, with its im-
plied recognition of the threats to the general’s status.
Those issues are reflected, too, in Domitian’s black dinner party.
Though the fact that emperor and triumphing general were here one
and the same inevitably complicates the story, an important underlying
theme remains the jockeying for preeminence between the general and
other participants in (or observers of ) the triumph. The intricate games
of power, humiliation, and control implied by the ceremony are in this
case both won and lost by Domitian: the emperor-general retains the
upper hand, but only at the cost of revealing his own sadistic tyranny
(or, on the other interpretation, at the cost of history forever missing
his joke!).
RITUAL BOUNDARIES
Triumphal feasting, in whatever form, raises larger questions about
where we choose to draw the boundary of this (or any) ritual—how we
decide what is to count as part of the ritual process and what to be taken
as merely ancillary. To put it simply, should we see the banqueting as an
integral element, perhaps even the highlight, of the triumph, or as a
common sequel to it—one of the “post-triumphal” festivities, as I have
already put it. And what difference does our choice make?
Feasting is only one aspect of the wider diffusion of the triumph be-
yond the procession itself. As Pompey’s triumph in 61 vividly illustrated,
the ceremony and its impact extended in a variety of different ways. No-
tably, temples funded by the profits of victory that had been paraded
through the streets and housing the most precious objects of triumphal
booty might serve to memorialize the occasion for centuries. The per-
formance of plays and the various displays at the games (ludi) associated
with military victory might fulfill a similar function. There is no clear
evidence for games formally attached to a triumphal procession (the so-
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 6 4
called Ludi Triumphales were a fourth-century commemoration of
Constantine’s victory over his rival Licinius in 324 ce), still less for dra-
matic performances in a strictly triumphal context.19 Yet the games
sometimes vowed by the general in the heat of battle, and celebrated in
the event of victory when he returned home, or those that might be held
at the dedication of “manubial” temples, could be linked in various
more or less direct ways to triumphal celebrations. So, for example, the
“prisoners of war” who featured in the arena at the games to mark the
dedication of Julius Caesar’s Temple of Venus Genetrix were, in all like-
lihood, those who had earlier been paraded in his triumphal proces-
sion.20 And I speculated earlier that the triumphal scenes in the plays
performed at the inauguration of Pompey’s vast building complex, on
the anniversary of his triumph, might have showcased some of the booty
that had already been on display in the triumphal procession itself.
More generally, games of this kind offer a very plausible context for
the production of those Roman historical dramas, fabulae praetextae,
which sometimes focused on particular military victories.21 The
Ambracia of Ennius, for example, took as its theme the defeat of the city
of Ambracia in northwest Greece, for which Ennius’ patron Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior celebrated a triumph in 187 bce. We do not know ex-
actly when it was first performed, but either the lavish ten-day games
held in fulfillment of the vow Nobilior made in battle (and funded out
of the triumphal booty) or the celebrations that would have accompa-
nied the dedication of Nobilior’s Temple of Hercules of the Muses seem
very likely occasions.22 Whether or not Ennius took Ambracia’s story
down as far as the triumph of Nobilior, so reenacting it on stage, we can-
not infer from the few fragments and scattered references to it that have
been preserved. But 150 years later, Horace had some sharp words for the
vulgar visual spectacle of plays which, he claimed, re-presented trium-
phal processions on stage, with captive kings, chariots, and spoils of
ivory and bronze.23
So where does the triumph stop? There is no single right answer to
the question of where to draw its boundaries, and whether or not to in-
clude the feasting or these dramatic replays and anniversary perfor-
The Boundaries of the Ritual
265
mances. The fact is that the Roman triumph, like all rituals, was a po-
rous set of practices and ideas, embedded in the day-to-day political,
social, and cultural world of Rome, with innumerable links and associa-
tions, both personal and institutional, to other ceremonies, customs,
events, and traditions. For modern scholars there is an inevitable trade-
off between a restrictively narrow approach and an impossibly all-em-
bracing one. To limit what we understand as “the ritual” simply to the
procession itself, and so to exclude from view the (maybe no less “ritual-